


Broken Branch

by kanako91



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fourth Age, Gen, Post-War of the Ring, What happened to Radagast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-19 13:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22711831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanako91/pseuds/kanako91
Summary: In Rhosgobel, Radagast withers.
Relationships: Radagast | Aiwendil & Yavanna Kementári
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Broken Branch

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Ramo spezzato](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9472955) by [kanako91](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanako91/pseuds/kanako91). 



Everything changes with the earthquake.

Animals take refuge in their burrows and Radagast runs into his Rhosgobel, only instinct driving him quick, quick, safe!

Earth trembles one more time, a few days later, and everything changes again.

Night after night, a tall woman dressed in green smiles and caresses his cheek, filling his nostrils the scent of fruit and ripe wheat. She never speaks to him, but she’s accompanied by the chants of harvest and the beat of hammer on anvil.

Day after day, the coat of illness and darkness, which smothered the forest for decades, lifts and light takes its place. It’s the sunrise that first kisses the higher leaves, then slowly descends along the younger branches to reach the older ones and down to the depths of the earth.

And it kisses Radagast as well.

Sleep comes faster, the green woman spends more time with him, while the energy that animated his body retracts, leaving him tired and weak, slumped in a chair, arms abandoned on the armrests.

One night, the green woman tells him about flowers changing into fruits.

Another night, the green woman climbs with him on a tree to show him the hidden eggs in a protected nest away from the eyes of predators.

Every night is a discovery, a shred of knowledge added to the others.

By day, the forest hums of songs of life and healing, while the branches stretch towards the sun, leaves cover them with a sparkling green and capture every ray of golden light.

No disease torments them anymore, no gangrene forces them to retrieve their lymph into deep and secure places.

Animals multiply and are coming back to the space between roots and branches. Even they don’t need him anymore: trees are strong again and offer them everything they need.

Nobody seeks Radagast the Brown anymore and he no longer leaves his Rhosgobel.

The earthquake is still a recent memory when the Elvenking seeks him. Does he want to know if he will keep his secret?

What was his secret, anyway?

Radagast listens to him, that melodious voice chanting his name as a dirge, as he knocks on the door and asks him how he's doing.

Difficult to say.

The smell of the ground, damp and cool, enters his nose. Between his toes, earthworms mow the soil, while the ants carry their too large booty, all together, small and laborious, free to go where they want, without the cobwebs stifling their anthills.

The Elvenking goes away, his query unanswered, and forest rallies around him in an embrace.

When Radagast closes his eyes, he comes out of great domes of thousand-year old trees, along with people dressed of ochres and green, as the woman who visits him. He runs in the orchards and offers tender gems to curious deers, he laughs and dances among different peoples, some adorned with jewels, others with flowers and pelts.

His body no longer remembers how to dance, while in his dreams a name echoes.

_Aiwendil. Aiwendil. Aiwendil._

What does it mean? He knows, but he cannot remember.

And the old name begins to lose its meaning, now that nobody whispers or chirps it.

Who is he now? Radagast or Aiwendil?

He can’t say.

For a long time, nobody calls him by that name or the other.

The presences in the forest change, become more intrusive, less cautious. The creatures that have inhabited it since the starry night retreat, instead, to the North and depart into the sunset.

Radagast sits in his Rhosgobel and chopping sounds ring through the bark, as old and sick trees give way to those young and healthy, and find a new life in mortal artefacts.

A voice sings to the trees wounded by fire, singing tunes that will not cure them, but make their healing sweeter, the pain more bearable.

In the rush to climb towards the Sun, a branch slams against a window of his Rhosgobel. It slams once against the shutters and nothing more.

The Elvenking, the only keeper of his name, comes back and is not alone. He doesn’t dare to knock at Rhosgobel, this time. But through the earth, Radagast _sees_ that with him there are a woman, high and gentle as an oak, and a man who is both otter and fox.

The new and the ancient, the old and the young.

The Elvenking tells something to him and something else to his companions, but Radagast understands only the languages of trees and animals. The broken sounds rising from the lips of the Elvenking are foreign to him.

The green woman, however, knows how to make herself understood.

 _This tree is strong and resilient_ , she says, a hand on the gnarled and twisted trunk and the other between its leaves, elongated dark green, and its black and oval fruits. _It can survive for long periods of drought, it is enough for it to retreat into itself, absorb water from its extremities and get rid of those parts that disperse it. If burned, after a brief recovery, it starts to grow back around the wound._

_Nothing can destroy it, because every ailment is a scar that helps it to grow in new and different directions._

Radagast could listen to that voice forever.

So he sleeps as much as possible, as more branches collide with the shutters, persistent in their purpose of passing through Rhosgobel, as if the house wasn’t there. He sleeps more than he stays awake, to stay with her, to get back to dancing and laughing and singing, among the animals of the forest and those of the fields, beneath the trees full of fruits and leaves green of new life.

_Come to me, Aiwendil._

Oh, he would go.

How could he resist her?

There's nothing left for Radagast in the forest.

Only trees determined to occupy the space that he and his Rhosgobel steal from them. They hit against the shutters and against the walls, trying to enter through the roof, and now even the noise of branches seems to talk to him.

_Come back to the trees, Aiwendil._

_Come back._

One day, Radagast opens his eyes upon a golden light. His arms recall how to lift and hide his face from it.

“Forgive the intrusion, my friend” says a masculine voice, thick and sweet like honey.

 _Aiwendil_ , echoes in his mind, but it's not the green woman. Instead a woman emerges from his memories, dressed in ochre and orange and with long hair the color of bark, and fidgets with her hands.

_I’ve been calling you for years, and you never answered me. I almost thought–_

Radagast lowers his arms and narrows his eyes to look at who entered his Rhosgobel. The ocher woman is not there. A few steps from his feet covered with soil and mushrooms, there is a Child of Stars, the rays of the sun caught in his hair, the light of distant lands shining upon his face.

In his right hand, a small pot with a broken branch peeping out from the soil.

“Do you recognise me?”

The Child of Stars moves one step towards him, stops and looks at his shape in the chair.

Radagast only now notices the wood on which he’s abandoned, the coarse and consumed cloth covering him. He opens his mouth to speak, but the lament that comes out does not sound as the language the Child of Stars uses as he turns to the broken branch.

“He can't answer any longer, that’s why he didn’t do it”.

_Let me give it a try._

The woman’s voice wraps around him. It is earth just moved where to sink roots, sunlight to stretch branches toward, wind for leaves to dance. 

_Come back to the trees with me, Aiwendil._

There is no more wood under him. The fabric of his clothes is but a vague memory.

Rhosgobel…

_Come back to our lady, my broken branch._

And Aiwendil goes.

**Author's Note:**

> It's a strange idea I had been ruminating on for some time because of my two long fics (still in Italian!) where Radagast or some of the Maiar appear. 
> 
> I've had some fun with more or less obscure references to characters and things that Radagast can't name in his state. A couple of references would make more sense with my other stories translated as well, but translating is hard and I spend most of my time writing in my mothertongue, ooops 😅
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Kan


End file.
